and welcome back to the big picture i'm sam sachs coming up in this half hour forty five thousand americans die every year because they have no access to lifesaving health insurance what's the only real solution to our nation's health care woes an answer in just a moment and americans love their facebook and their twitter and even their amazon but as great as those things are they come in quite a price our privacy or our privacy rights doomed in the age of technology.

you see mitt romney lives in a different universe than the rest of us in mitt romney's universe the top tax rate is fifteen percent in our universe it's thirty five percent. and mitt romney's universe the entire world is a bank account from the cayman islands to switzerland but in our universe we have checking accounts at the nearest bank in town and mitt romney's universe corporations are people in our universe well you know that's just ridiculous unless you sit on the supreme court and mitt romney's universe there is no health care crisis in america you see in an interview with the columbus dispatch newspaper romney doubled down on his notion that uninsured americans can still get the care they need romney said quote we don't have a setting across this country where if you don't have insurance we just said you tough luck you're going to die when you have your heart attack now you go to the hospital you get treated you get care and it's paid for either by charity the government or by the hospital we don't have people that become ill who die in their

apartment because they don't have insurance and quote right now let's cue harvard medical school which recently found that in the real universe americans are indeed dying because they don't have health insurance from harvard's website quote the study conducted that harvard medical school and cambridge health alliance found that uninsured working age americans have a forty percent higher risk of death than their privately insured counterparts the study which analyzed data from national surveys carried out by the centers for disease control and prevention assessed death rates after taking into account education income and many other factors including smoking drinking obesity and estimated the whack of health insurance causes forty four thousand seven hundred eighty nine excess deaths annually. so romney's calculation was only off by about forty five thousand people or the equivalent of fifty nine

eleventh's which happen every single year because of our for profit health insurance system and one has to wonder why exactly is that we don't divert as much attention to our deadly health care system as we devote to deadly terrorism i would argue there's only one solution left when it comes to fixing america's health care system and that's to do with the rest of the developed world does adopt a single payer system joining me now is marc harrold libertarian commentator attorney and author of the book observations of white noise an acid test for the first amendment marc welcome one day you're going to explain what the heck your book is about in fact i just gave you a copy and you can read it. so forty five thousand americans die every year this is a complete disaster isn't it well it is a disaster now you know i don't know how valid the study is it comes from harvard you know i'll go with your numbers for tonight i don't agree with mitt romney that there's no health care crisis there is a health care crisis and there needs to be availability of fair insurance that's a fair cost serves it's purpose and all of those things we don't have i don't have

a difference of opinion that there's a problem we just have different opinions as to what the solution is i don't think a single payer system is the solution i think other countries we're comparing apples and oranges a little bit with other countries much smaller countries are different free market ideals than we have but i don't think single payer is the way to go but i don't agree with mitt romney that there's no problem in time you have people who are uninsured there's a problem i think the free market can cure that if it's left with less regulation and up until the sixty's people could afford insurance the problem a lot of it is they need to deregulate they need to get a lot of the deregulate they need to deal with those things that force insurance companies to start taking people with preexisting conditions we should take those away none of that's that's a regulation but that's a criteria for accepting insurance a lot of that there's a big if there's a difference i'm talking about a lot of the regulation drove the cost of insurance way up you need to reform the f.d.a. f.d.a. the food drug administration. to get out of that to some degree that they're way way too involved with that but you need that medical savings accounts are fine and the government should be involved in health care in very limited ways they should

of course and force contracts like they do in other any other area they should they should have tax exemptions for health care cost for private medical savings accounts but we are seeing a seismic shift in the argument you're making are pragmatic when you're trying to fix a problem and i think everyone knows the problems to be fixed there's a lot of things we can do in this country in fact we can take away a lot of liberties and make us safer we can take a lot of our economic liberty away and what the government controls it may make us healthier for the short term or look like a nice for the long term a little too economically i mean every day we have people who are on the phone battling with their health insurance companies because let's face it health insurance companies are run to make quarterly profits and that means they have to deny some care along the line when they just make sure they meet those but the i don't know why i'm going to be born to build a system that's adopted that we do have a system it's called medicare and people are pretty happy with it people are pretty happy with medicare and you're also assuming anyone senior citizen who wants to get rid of medicare would not a senior citizen the needs medicare of course not and i'm not saying they shouldn't

get with if they paid in they should get what's coming to him i'm not talking about cut the money but first for one thing we're talking about medicare as if it can exist in her her pet perpetuity it's going to go bankrupt is that at some point it's not but the idea as i see it that there's the customers and it's a better system in the governments involved in the government going to better customer service than a for profit entity i don't believe in that serial i remember that some people will go out of business thirty or most developed nations in the world where the only one that doesn't have you know kind of a system that guarantees health insurance is a basic human rights and we also just so happen to spend far more and did far less out of the out of out of what we put into it but the sort of rocketing cost a lot of that comes from the government control i'm talking about the government limiting its role look at things like i mean they want to look at cosmetic surgery look at lasik look at things like this where the health care is a commodity and it's treated as a commodity it's not cover. by insurance the cost of they come down with the technology advances there's new technology people can choose whatever whoever they want to go to it's not it's a little bit apples and oranges but health care is

a commodity like anything else the market will control it better than the government but i think there is a big issue when it comes to you know fee for service in our health care system that you know that incentivizes hospitals and doctors to prescribe lots of tests to get paid for that that's one reason why costs are going up through you know that's a little bit harder problem to solve but i think it's a single payer system could solve that in and de incentivized that sort of i don't really think if you have a first of all i'm assuming when you say single payer system you talk about everybody paid in the government paying now yes i know you're certainly not talking about put in private hands and that would be problematic as well but just the source of the money and who writes the money through the roof we're guard left at the end of the day to do that much different than the united states can is very different in the united states and i know every time i'm on here you say canadians love their health care i have different stories from people who work up in canada who are american citizens who work up there who have been told when they go to a hospital if you know merican says go back we all were treated before we can relocate and money together to protect ourselves from crime from fire why not our body ten seconds we're going to i did it i don't believe it'll work it's

a much different thing crime and fire is a service that the government needs to provide to in a very real time because you're calling nine one you need something to come health care is much broader than that and if the government infringes it just one more way there infringing always a pleasure thanks a lot for coming on a time when it comes to health care the united states has a lot to learn in fact it has a lot to learn from the nation of rwanda here's tom state. ben franklin framus lee said at the end of the constitutional convention seven hundred eighty seven that if we don't hang together we shall surely hang separately that lesson of we're all in it together was not lost on rwanda rwanda is a small nation in central africa one of the poorest and most underdeveloped nations in the world nearly sixty percent of rwandans live below the national poverty line and in rwanda with an average income. of just five hundred sixty dollars per year per family less than two dollars a day being in poverty membrane home and living on as little as ten cents

a day from one thousand nine hundred ninety four that nation had a civil war and in april of one thousand nine hundred four the rwanda genocide began by asking for three months and taking the lives of nearly a million rwandans and yet despite going through a civil war and a genocide and being one of the poorest countries on earth this tiny nation of rwanda has something the united states doesn't health care system that works for all. today the new talking point coming out of the right against obamacare is that it raises taxes yeah. well that's exactly how rwanda what about creating a health care system that works for everybody today only four percent of the rwandan public population is uninsured compared to more than sixteen percent in the united states so how did rwanda do it in one thousand nine hundred nine most rwandans had never seen a doctor and even when they were really sick they couldn't get into the hospital primarily because the costs were so high that our average citizens couldn't afford

knowing that they had to take action the governments ministry of health started a pilot project of providing health insurance in three of the countries districts what we might call states with the success in these three states these three districts the program began to spread across the country in two thousand and four iran it has some kinks that the main one was that the government set insurance premiums at two dollars a year and that was too much for most rwandans to afford so then the program shifted to a progressive tax system for wealthy rwandans insurance premiums increased to eight dollars a year while premiums for the poor decreased to zero this is similar to what's in obamacare poor and low income americans get free medicaid and middle income americans get tax subsidies to purchase health insurance at little or no expense. today the results are a want is universal health care system are remarkable now there is a massive massive network of community health workers and centers all across the

country in both cities and villages eighty percent of aids patients in rwanda are getting the treatment that they need which is really critical in a nation with one of the highest aids infection rates in all of africa just ten years ago before the insurance program was put into place life expectancy was a meager forty eight years at birth now it's fifty eight years and in the last five years deaths of children under five have dropped by half and malaria a once debilitating and highly deadly disease in rwanda is now diagnosed quicker which means lifesaving treatment is provided faster all of these improvements are thanks to a system that uses progressive taxes a system that obamacare embraces as well. currently the medicare tax on your salary is two point nine percent starting in two thousand and thirteen there will be a small increase nine tenths of one percent point nine percent for americans and

only for americans making over two hundred thousand dollars a year and also in two thousand and thirteen there will be a three point eight percent increase on the federal income tax rate for long term capital gains and dividends again only for those people with a gross income over two hundred thousand dollars finally they'll be a tax of about six hundred dollars a year on those freeloaders who have a higher than average income but don't want to buy health insurance. so what's the big picture rwanda knew that in order to create a health care system that works for all the wealthiest rwandans had to contribute their fair share rwanda understood everyone has to be covered if the system is really going to work for the entire nation and obamacare begins to do the same thing for america. obamacare makes the wealthiest americans literally the one percenters contribute a little slightly more to medicare so that the system has enough funding to help all americans get the health care and treatment they need if we ever want to see

a country where health care reaches all americans like a dozen rwanda of all places and it's critical that we continue what obamacare has started. we're all in this together after all just has been frankly. you know how sometimes you see a story and it seems so for lengthly you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else and you hear or see some other part of it and realize

everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm tom harvey welcome to the big picture. here is mitt romney trying to figure out the name of that thing that we americans call a dollar. i'm sorry i'm just a guy who cares an awful lot of money you sir are a fool you know what kind of mind they're terrorist cells in your neighborhood all want the usa to feature a son a liberal and the christian point you. can see your beliefs about it because you know the corporate media distracts us from what you and i should care about because their profit driven industry that sells of sensationalistic garbage because of

breaking news i'm having martin and we're going to break that. now a quick update out of europe i.m.f. director christine lagarde is beginning to walk back austerity today will guard address the ongoing debt crisis in europe made worse by austerity warning governments that increasing economic output should be put ahead of meeting deficit targets in other words governments need to be growing economies and not contract ing that she specifically urged policymakers in the eurozone to give greece more time to meet spending cuts goals to soften the impact of austerity according to data from the i.m.f. world economic outlook the eurozone nations that embraced austerity like greece

portugal and spain have seen their economies contract far more than yours or nations that haven't so let's hope austerity happy republicans in the united states paul ryan who's debating tonight are paying attention to the harm their policies are causing across the atlantic. so let's assume you think your neighbor is a terrorist and you just need to find the evidence so you know you sort open his mail and you wiretap his phone and you climb through his window when he's at work and check his internet search history well guess what would happen if you did all these things and got caught. you go to jail these are federal crimes but now let's

assume you're a giant telecom corporation like eighteen t. and let's assume you as a teensy install software on your call centers in san francisco seattle san jose los angeles and san diego that allows the government to monitor virtually endless amounts of internet traffic including phone calls right on the internet without any sort of warrant whatsoever and let's assume that eight hundred eighty again without a warrant the sides to hand over hundreds of terabytes of data to the n.s.a. that includes all the phone numbers dialed and web sites visited by millions of americans now what do you think happens day t.n.t. if they do this well it is alleged and well documented that they did indeed do this and congress and now the supreme court have made sure that eight hundred eighty and other telecom giants like sprint and verizon are immune from any criminal or civil actions for their massive illegal spying operation you see this all goes

back to nine eleven when george w. bush read the constitution and created a massive surveillance system that relies on telecommunication companies to hand over their customer's private information to be data mined and we can't know if bush did this just because he was scared as hell of terrorist or because he saw an opportunity to expand the powers of his executive branch to keep more tabs on more and more americans as former n.s.a. analyst turned whistle blower william binney said about the spying program quote after nine eleven all the wraps came off between the white house and n.s.a. and cia they decided to eliminate the protections on u.s. citizens. to benny it was all too much you left the agency and expose what was going on as he said quote it was a direct violation of the constitutional rights of everybody in this country plus it violated the pen register law and stored communications act the electronic privacy act the intelligence acts of nine hundred forty seven and one nine hundred

seventy eight i mean all those laws were being violated including the constitution in two thousand and six once the spying program came to light dozens of lawsuits were filed against the telecom giants by customers who allege that they were spied on facing what could be a series of very expensive judgments against the likes of eighteen t. and other telecoms congress and george w. bush intervenes passing the phys amendments act and two thousand and eight that act granted retroactive immunity to all companies that engage in illegal spying on americans putting a stop to the pending lawsuits the a.c.l.u. and the electronic frontier foundation filed lawsuit against that law saying it clearly violates the constitution and gives the executive branch free rein to commit warrantless suspicion list the domestic surveillance there is nothing the courts could do about it this week the supreme court refused to hear that legal

challenge the skilling one of the last remaining options to hold the telecom giants accountable for participating in mass surveillance so eight hundred eighty skates and the surveillance state lives on and under president obama it's thrived as recent d.o.j. documents obtained by the a.c.l.u. show under president obama certain forms of warrantless phone surveillance have increased sixty percent and certain forms of warrantless e-mail and network surveillance they've increased three hundred and sixty one percent president obama as been one heck of a surveil are and she. but there's a bigger picture to all of this and that's this as the surveillance state grows any hope of really the people coming together and creating progressive movements in the streets diminishes in fact the very nature of dissent and revolution requires privacy and that is the subject of tonight's daily to it's increasingly looking

like the united states is one generation away from completely forgetting what privacy me and the consequences of this great forgetting will be tragic for our nation why because without private privacy without the ability to be anonymous america can't even plan a peaceful revolution or nonviolent progressive social change movements or conservative social change movements for that matter because of big corporations or big brother are watching they can block efforts before they even become public in recent years we've learned about the massive surveillance systems being built by the corporate state for example we now know about the warrantless wiretapping of american citizens post nine eleven we know now about trap trap wire a law enforcement tool that keeps track of our movements in major cities across the nation through close circuit cameras facial recognition software and license plate readers and we know of the enormous spy center being built right now by the n.s.a.

in utah it's going to house enormous amounts of data collected by the n.s.a. since nine eleven virtually everybody's e-mails phone calls text messages and more all of it one source so it's easily analyzed the n.s.a. can now hold the digital version of five hundred quintillion pages of text here's what that number would look like spelled out. it's a lot of data what's worse americans are increasingly willing to give the surveillance state and snoopy corporations anything they want today we're sacrificing privacy for convenience and interconnection yeah stickley post our locations our pictures our personal information on sites like facebook and twitter all of which are monitored by the corporate surveillance state and those corporations themselves your web experience is now cured fully compiled examined and fine tuned so advertising can target you specifically how do advertisers know

what you want because they have been collecting data on what websites you go to and what you search for on hundreds of websites and search engines a blatant in my opinion violation of individual privacy online data collection is now a multi billion dollar industry this level of surveillance would have been unthinkable for previous generations including our founding fathers who held privacy in the highest regards including the right to privacy that they enshrined in the fourth amendment of the bill of rights and arguably in the third amendments will but today we're all just accepting these invasions of our privacy although in europe they are not accepting citizens in other democracies aren't as naive or as passive as americans under pressure from the european union facebook announced that it scrappiness facial recognition software and deleting all the data derived from it but here in the united states facebook continues to use facial recognition software despite complaints from groups like the electronic privacy information center we

simply don't have the laws that are needed here in the united states to protect privacy online and as long as advertisers can make money off knowing your habits and secrets we never will because citizens united gave those advertisers the right to buy your member of congress as the nonpartisan congressional research service report warns there is no comprehensive federal privacy statute that protects personal. information instead a patchwork of federal laws and regulations govern the collection of disclosure of personal information and has been addressed by congress out of sector by sector basis some contend with this patchwork of laws and regulations is insufficient to meet the demands of today's technology you know in europe there's a bill of rights for on line users known as the data protection directive and new laws are regularly coming down the pike in europe to give even more protections to online users and to enforce heavy fines on corporations or governments that violate individual privacy europe knows this is

a serious problem. we need to as well. social change hinges on privacy and in some cases on anonymity this goes all the way back to the boston tea party when an anonymous activist known to this day merely as rustic has posted flyers around boston the lead directly to the boston tea party in today's america rustic is would have been exposed to the boston tea party probably shut down before it even started in today's america people couldn't have conspired to overthrow unjust laws from slavery to giving women rights to civil rights to ending the wars in vietnam and iraq yes social media was a tremendous booth for both the boost for both the occupy movement and the arab spring to get people into the streets but it was also just as tremendous a tool for law enforcement in both parts of the world to work to quash those it's as journalist chris hedges points out it's all about criminalizing dissent

tragically the day may come indeed it may already be here when if you plan to protest the corporate takeover of our government drone warfare or intentional or indefinite detention if you are protesting those things you'll find yourself in jail before you even get into the streets seem impossible just ask the people planning protests at the r n c in minneapolis in two thousand and eight the bush administration had them take it out before they could even publicly speak out it's getting more and more difficult and more and more dangerous to launch successful socially transformational movements because the powers that be including the corporations or industries you may be protesting against know ahead of time what all your moves are going to be yes it's annoying to receive ads online or even have an embarrassing picture you post on facebook but that should be the least of our worries when it comes to online privacy the fundamental ability for we the people to create social change and lead nonviolent revolutionary movements against unjust

oppressive forces is always in danger when. nation loses its privacy protections the fight for privacy will be one of the signature battles moving forward during uncertain times in america and without privacy and the ability to remain anonymous that goes along with it genuine democracy will never again flourish in the land of the free for more information and to join this fight for privacy go to the electronic privacy information center is website at epic. dot org. that is the way it is tonight thursday october eleventh two thousand and twelve for more information on any of the stories we've covered visit our website to thom hartmann dot com free speech dot org dot com and if you missed any of tonight's show you can our washington hulu at hulu dot com slash the big picture also check out our. thom hartmann dot com and also check out all the different ways you can send us your feedback. as home always says democracy begins with you

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